For some people, graveyards are the things nightmares are made of. But for others, they are relics of early American art, culture and history.

On a recent Sunday, New London's municipal historian Sally Ryan led a tour of Ye Antientest Burial Ground, the graveyard snuggled into a hillside on Hempstead Street in the New London's historic Post Hill neighborhood.

"This is really a very special place in the city," Ryan said of the burial ground, which is one of the oldest in New England. "There are bits of the city's history all throughout this graveyard."

Art conservator Lance Mayer, who joined Ryan on the tour of the graveyard, called the burial ground "an open air museum" displaying "one of the most important forms of early American expression."

Because gravestones were often carved by local craftsmen, each stone bears the style of the individual carver and stones in the same graveyard can display a wide variety of styles.

"All over New England, in every little town or village, you often have a unique style of stone carving," Mayer said. "And this graveyard is really one of the best in the United States to see this type of gravestone and the different styles of stone carving."

Most of the gravestones in Ye Antientest Burial Ground are carved from stone from Newport, R.I., or Boston because the local stone "just didn't split" neatly or would crack too easily, Mayer said.

One gravestone in particular, engraved by the John Stevens Shop in Newport, attracted Mayer's interest.

"Some people say the Stevens shop is the oldest business in America still carrying on the same business at the same address," he said.

Ryan was intrigued by the shared gravestone for city resident Pygan Adams and his three sons. When Adams died at 64, in July 1776, he was buried with his three sons, each of whom died either at sea or on a tropical island.

"This one is a good example of life in New London up until about the Revolutionary War," Ryan said. "Those islands grew sugar, from sugar you get molasses and from molasses you get rum. New London was one point of that triangular trade and many, many men from New London often sailed to the Caribbean."

It is not just the individual gravestones that tell the tales of the city's bygone days, though. Ye Antientest Burial Ground itself illuminates the city's growth and evolution, Ryan said.

"When John Winthrop founded New London in 1646, he decided that this would be the town green," she said. "If you were to take down all the trees and take down all the buildings around here, you would see that this is one of the highest points in all of New London."

In the city's early years, a town meeting house that also held Sunday church services sat next to the town green, where the Regional Multicultural Magnet School is today. By 1652, the town's early settlers began to be buried at Ye Antientest Burial Ground.

But as the whaling industry began to grow and prosper in New London's harbor, the heart of the city moved closer to the Thames River.

"When we became an active seaport, the center of town gradually shifted down State Street and to the parade," Ryan said. "When the city was founded, we needed a high point for defense, but when the seaport was booming the town meeting house became the town poor house."

Though the focal point of the community had left the Post Hill neighborhood, the graveyard remained. Until the late 19th century, the neighborhood also had a second graveyard - at what is now Williams Memorial Park at the corner of Broad and Hempstead streets.

The wife of Mayor Charles Augustus Williams, though, had other plans for the land.

"When Mrs. Williams decided the graveyard should be turned into a park, they dug everybody up and moved them to what is now Cedar Grove" cemetery," Ryan said.

Today, Ye Antientest Burial Ground is open during daylight hours for visitors and additional information is available from the Hempstead Houses.

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